CIA Spurned Prison Rules, Report Says

By Greg Miller

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 26, 2004

WASHINGTON — CIA operatives hid inmates, flouted rules and played a
corrosive role at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi facility where prisoners were brutalized
and humiliated, according to a military report released Wednesday.

The
report does not implicate the intelligence agency in the sexually demeaning
treatment of prisoners, which triggered an international scandal when photos of
the abuse surfaced in April.

The bulk of the report focuses on the role
of military intelligence soldiers and officers in the abuse.

But CIA
agents often behaved as if they were above the rules and beyond reproach,
ignoring bans on bringing weapons into interrogation booths and bypassing basic
requirements on registering prisoners they had taken to the facility, the
investigators found.

Agents insisted that at least eight of their
prisoners be kept off the books and out of reach of Red Cross inspectors,
becoming so-called ghost detainees.

The report disclosed new details
about a case in which CIA operatives had interrogated a captive who was later
found dead in a shower stall.

In a previously undisclosed case, agency
employees locked up three Saudis who were working with the U.S.-led coalition as
part of a medical team.

The men weren't released, military
investigators said, until after the help of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
was enlisted, apparently by the Saudi government.

In another instance,
a CIA officer brought a weapon into the interrogation booth with him to
intimidate a detainee he was questioning.

The officer "drew his weapon,
chambered a round and placed the weapon in his holster," violating strict rules
against bringing firearms into the facility, the report said.

Overall,
"CIA detention and interrogation practices led to a loss of accountability,
abuse, reduced interagency cooperation and an unhealthy mystique that further
poisoned the atmosphere at Abu Ghraib," the report said.

A CIA
spokesman declined to comment, but a U.S. intelligence official rejected the
findings.

"The report makes broad allegations about the CIA that are
not supported by either the text of the report or the material contained in the
annexes," the official said.

But the Army investigation — led by
Maj. Gen. George R. Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones — uncovered
new information that suggested a broader pattern of abuse by the CIA, often
referred to in the report as an "other government agency," or OGA.

At a
news conference Wednesday, Fay indicated that investigators had been blocked
from pursuing allegations against CIA employees.

He said he had "some
specific conversations with the CIA about the issues that we wanted to explore
... and they made it very clear to me that they're going to conduct their own,
thorough, detailed investigation."

A CIA spokesman declined to say
whether the agency had cooperated.

The CIA inspector general's office
in May launched a broad investigation into agency involvement in detention and
interrogation abuses in Iraq.

The agency has also referred at least
three cases to the Justice Department involving detainees who died in CIA
custody, apparently including one at Abu Ghraib.

In some sections of
the Army report, investigators scolded the more seasoned CIA operatives for
setting a bad example for typically younger military troops engaged in
intelligence work. But even senior officers were susceptible to the agency
aura, the report said.

Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, head of the joint
interrogation facility at Abu Ghraib, "became fascinated" with the CIA
operatives who frequented the prison outside Baghdad. The agency officers took
advantage, the report said, convincing Jordan and his superiors "that they
should be allowed to operate outside the established local rules and
procedures."

This led to the much-criticized practice of the CIA
delivering so-called ghost detainees, who were incarcerated at Abu Ghraib but
never formally entered on the prison rolls.

The report, which called
for further investigation, said the practice "caused confusion and acrimony
between the Army and OGA, and in at least one instance, acrimony between the
U.S. and Saudi Arabian entities."

In that case, the CIA delivered
three "Saudi national medical personnel working for the coalition in Iraq" and
asked that they be kept at Abu Ghraib under false names, the report said. The
Saudi general in charge of the men asked U.S. authorities to check records for
them, but searches using the men's names repeatedly came back negative.

Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, then the senior U.S. representative in Iraq,
subsequently requested a search, as did the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, the Saudi
capital.

"Ultimately, the secretary of State, Colin Powell, requested a
search, and, as with the other requestors, had to be told that the three men
were not known to be in U.S. custody," the report said.

Only after a
military official at the compound recalled that the CIA had recently brought in
three Saudi men did prison administrators check with the detainees and learn
their real identities.

"The men were eventually released," according to
the report, which did not elaborate on why they had been detained.

The
CIA spokesman declined to comment on the matter.

The Army investigation
also provides fresh details on previously reported alleged CIA abuses, including
the death of a prisoner being interrogated by an agency officer in November.

The man, identified in the report only as "Detainee 28," was suspected of
having been involved in an attack against the Red Cross and had been captured by
a Navy SEAL team working with agency operatives.

The prisoner
"reportedly resisted arrest, so a SEAL team member butt-stroked Detainee 28 on
the side of the head to subdue him."

A CIA official brought the
prisoner to Abu Ghraib early in the morning of Nov. 4 and placed him in a
shower room used for interrogations.

Hours later, he was found dead in
the stall, "facedown, handcuffed with his hands behind his back," the report
said.

The prisoner was kept on ice and taken out the next day on a
gurney "as if he were only ill, so as not to draw the attention of the Iraqi
guards and detainees."

The prisoner was later determined to have died
of a blood clot in the brain, probably from the injuries he sustained when he
was captured.

"Had the CIA followed established Army procedures" when
bringing the detainee into the prison, he "would have been medically screened,"
the report said, leaving unstated the possibility that his injuries might have
been diagnosed and he might have survived.

That death is among those
currently under investigation by the CIA inspector general's office, according
to the U.S. intelligence official, and is also reportedly among the three cases
referred to the Justice Department.

In another case, a former Iraqi
general, Abed Hamed Mowhoush, died in western Iraq in November, several days
after being interrogated by agency operatives.

The third incident
involved a detainee who died in Afghanistan last year in CIA custody. A CIA
paramilitary contractor, David A. Passaro, has been charged in the case,
accused of using a large flashlight to beat the prisoner, who was suspected of
taking part in rocket attacks on U.S. forces.